God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son not to condemn it but rather that the world might be saved through him. This famous passage from the Gospel according to St. John answers one of the age-old questions that have been tackled in the Christian world: why did God become man? Many theologians have answered this question, the notable one being St. Anselm of Canterbury in a work entitled Cur Deus Homo (Why God became Man). And while the various answers that have been presented forth by theologians and other scholars are certainly insightful, I tend to believe that the evangelist John had already given an answer that, to me, was satisfactory. According to the above verse that was part of the conversation that Jesus was having with Nicodemus, it was not because of our sins that God sent his Son (the famed “happy fault”) into the world. Rather, it was out of love for the created universe that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ. To what end? So that the world might be saved through him.
The salvation wrought by Jesus is not one that is “after-the-fact,” as it were. It is not something that is meant to pull us out of some mess in which we have found ourselves (even if such is the understanding of salvation that we have come to embrace). Rather, the salvation brought to us in Jesus Christ is “before-the-fact” (of our sinning). It was willed by God at the beginning and was set by him as the culmination and goal of the creative process. For salvation means creation coming to rest in God.